Assessment of Land Use Land Cover Change and Decline in Sugarcane Farming Using GIS and Remote Sensing in Mumias District, Kenya

Land use/cover changes are pervasive with no clear understanding of their spatial extends, drivers and impacts to society. Land-use changes have become a key component in the current strategies for managing and monitoring the natural resources and environment changes. The purpose of this study was to assess the land covers change and decline in sugarcane farming using a three time series of Landsat satellite images of 1984, 2000 and 2015. The study was guided by the following specific objectives to determine the characteristics of land use land cover using Landsat images. Primary data collection involved actual field visit to capture GPS points while secondary data were collected from different sources composed of different kinds such as landsat images, population data, topographical sheets, google earth, road and rainfall data among others. Data integration involved combining data from different sources to enable evaluate driving forces and impacts of land use/cover change. Image pre-processing included image spatial sub-setting, radiometric correction, pan sharpening and image enhancement. Image processing involved supervised classification method with maximum likelihood algorithm in determination of six classes of land use/cover. Error matrix as opposed to single data assessment was used to determine the accuracy of each classified image and found within acceptable limits. The analysed data were presented in the form of maps, tales and graphs. The findings on land use/cover image map from processed data revealed six information classes as sugarcane, maize, other vegetation, built-up, water body and bare land. Maize and sugarcane had the most significant land use/cover changes with 54 % increase and 39 % reduction respectively. The driving forces included population, size of land and transport infrastructure. Encroachment into other land use fields haphazardly in search of space to live, farm and work indicates lack of proper physical planning and management of land use. The findings finally revealed that land use changes especially decline in sugarcane farming brought economic downfall to society since most farmers earned their living from it. The study recommended that information about land use/cover should be provided consistently to control discipline on human and natural action on land having human dimension as greatest factor of land use/cover change. The technique can aid in proper management of land use as planned. Remotely sense data therefore should find use in all fields of application with agreeable results.